A Word About Passion

As I’ve jotted down my thoughts over the years, I’ve found the fonts flow faster and smoother when the subject is something that inspires passion. Like my stepson….Geri’s son, Billy. His passion for life is so intense it is contagious. He packs at least 36 hours into every 24 hour day. And he squeezes more out of a year than most people do in a decade.

Billy doesn’t do everything. But, everything he does, he does passionately. Whether he is scouring the factories of mainland China for new products to market in the USA, searching for sea hearts along the edge of an ocean, or riding one of his beloved BMW motorcycles cross-country, he’s in high gear, blazing new trails and sharing his zest for life with anyone who happens to come within earshot.

One of Billy’s many passions dating back to his childhood is his love of his church and school back in Lake Worth, Florida. Regrettably, Hurricane Wilma leveled that edifice leaving nothing but crumbs of wood, stone and stained glass back in 2005. With nothing but memories and 4 pieces of shattered stained glass Billy came up with the idea of getting me to craft something incorporating these relics which would serve as a physical icon of his passion for the now gone church and school.

OK, so yeah, I work with stained glass, but these particular pieces were an inch or more in thickness…nothing like any glass I’d ever seen. So, it was about 2 years after he left the 4 pieces with me that Billy’s passion finally leaked over into my psychic space. And, voila…the work practically constructed itself.

The “void” in the center represents the church which is no longer there. The “lines’ emanating from the center represent the explosive force of the storm, and the 4 pieces of stained glass are, well, authentic pieces of the church that was blown apart. So, this is the most definitive case I’ve seen which proves that passion begets passion.

I have no idea how a guy as busy as Billy (photo below) can even begin to find the time to take leave from his high powered job, depart the country and spend a few weeks building crude houses and digging wells in places like Jamaica and Tanzania where people are living in abject poverty but that’s what he does. Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings are routinely spent cooking for the homeless and providing food for those who don’t have the means to provide it for themselves. I guess it has something to do with that “passion” thing. Maybe that’s why he’s my hero of heros. I love you, man.

William Hans Senn